Should I spend $3600 for a gaming rig?
Simple answer
NO!.
Let me break it down what you have there.
Lian-Li PC6089 $166.00
Antec 550W PSU $118.99
=$284.99 for a
CASE AND PSU?! No offense but a Lian-Li case will not make your games run faster and that is the
ONLY thing you should care about when building a gaming rig. What I suggest you buy instead is an Antec PLUS1080AMG which should go for around $135 US. Right off the bat you've just saved $150 that you can put to a more powerful CPU, video card, ram or even hard drive to make the performance -better-. Is 550 Watts needed? Surely not. The 430 that comes with the Antec I've mentioned is far enough.
The motherboard you selected is a nice board, it has MANY features. But are these useful to you? Think about it before you buy it. Do you really need onboard audio, onboard lan, etc etc if your just going to buy an Audigy? No? Didn't think so. So you could probably get an equally stable and performance wise board for about $43 cheaper. So far we've saved $193 and the performance of your system hasn't taken a hit at all which is a
GOOD THING and the only thing that should matter to a true gamer.
Next we have the all important video card. Every gamer knows this is vital to his everyday gibs/fragging adventures. Yes this is an important piece that shouldn't be taken lightly. Radeon 9700 Pro are very nice and the All in Wonder usually don't cost much more (for the 9700 Pro that is) so yes, you can keep this card if you will make use of its extras... if not you can cut another $50 off the price probably, but lets just say for sake you will possibly need/want the features in the future plus they are just nice to have in case. So we let this stay the same. Still at $193 saved and performance hasn't taken a hit.
Then comes the CPU in your list. This too, shouldn't be taken lightly as it directly impacts the performance of a gamer. You've selected an Athlon w/ Barton core. Nice cpu. However, take note that AMD once again, yes folks, they once again changed their model numbers and corresponding MHz power. While this CPU does have more cache on it, it has dropped to 1.83 GHz. Does the cache make a difference? Yes... some hardware sites have suggested it compares about 100 MHz more than older Athlons of the same clock speed. You chose an OEM processor however. I know I'll get flamed for this but I really suggest buying it retail boxed. Even if you have no use for the stock heatsink & fan, the 3 year warranty is a nice thing to have with it. So you spend on average, $15 more to get the retail boxed as oppose to OEM stuff for this CPU. $193 savings - $15 = $178. Performance hasn't taken a hit and we are still $178 ahead of the game AND have a little reassurance as far as the processor goes.
Another important thing in a system is the RAM. This can not be understated. While lots of RAM is nice, I don't think anything over 1024 MB is useful in a gaming or desktop system so you have picked a sweet number. 512 is nice, but 1024 is better safe than sorry if you want a true baller's computer. So your going with DDR PC3200. A selection I would have recommended. But corsair? The improvement for the "lower latency" is really at an utmost, minimal over the crucial ram. 512 sticks from crucial go for $100 each with FREE shipping and LIFETIME warranty. I've had nothing but good experiences with crucial in even our critical servers. Thats $200 from crucial or $325 from corsair. Will you notice a difference? Nope. You won't. Do you need platinum silver heat spreaders? Nope. Unless your one of those kids who likes case windows and stuff like neon club kid lights. But as anyone knows, a tricked out honda civic with spoiler, lights, and all those doodads STILL don't make it faster if the inside and core of the engine ain't improved/modded (I hate to break it to those kids lol). I'm not trying to knock your selection I'm just trying to save you some money while getting BETTER performance for your "game rig" if thats what it is (not a "trick" rig hehe). Silver heat spreaders aren't necessary whatsoever. Only, and only,
POSSIBLY if you are overclocking. But even then. Why overclock if your dropping $3600 from the get go, why not just pay $200 more and buy something higher performing heh. So if you go with crucial ram like I suggest you've saved yourself $125 more. $125 + $178 = $303 saved so far.... and not ONE performance hit I'll mind you. (and please, to those people who say CAS Latency on corsair is lower, tell me, how often do you notice a single nanosecond going from 2ns to 3ns? Thanks... I didn't think so).
As for floppy drive you can't go wrong with a Sony one. Mine has worked fine for 5 years in my
old computer. Notice I say old. Meaning I don't put them in any newer machines. I've no use for them and I don't think a "gaming rig" would either. Especially if your one of those
overclockers it would just block your airflow more having the FDD cable and stuff heh. But nevertheless if you do the odd homework assignment on your computer (if your younger, I have no clue on your age sorry if your an adult heh), it is nice to transfer stuff quickly. Some people will laugh at me and say "dude what about BIOS flashing" well DUDES many new boards have windows tools that, gasp, let you flash from windows. I know ASUS supports this for many, I'm not sure about the particular board above. Anyhow for sake of the matter we will leave it on your list. Still $303 saved and no performance hit. Your still getting 1023123.12 frames per second in unreal tournament 2003 hehe.
Next is also another important piece in the system. Hard drives. Yes people will scoff and say "this is only for map loading and whatnot" but if you want performance rig, do it
the right way from the beginning. I'm sure even though you didn't specify, you want to use this "game rig" for some other things too. And hard drive performance is one of the main bottlenecks today. Ask yourself, can you store 250 GB at once? I know I can't. I choose smaller and faster drives (SCSI) because I like performance more. Download lots? (I won't go into if its legal or illegal hehe...for sake lets just say its purely legal linux ISOs lol) Then what is your DVD/CD recordable for if you won't burn the stuff heh. Unless you want to store, oh, 400 full-length (legal mind you hehe) DivX on your machine at a time then you wouldn't really need this much space for a "game rig" afterall games are at most a couple gigs and most people only play 5 games at a point in their life. Heck I only play two (starcraft and counter-strike). I'll say that you need 240 GB instead. Why 10 gigs less? Because you can't get 125 GB drives. Yes, thats right, I'm suggesting you get
2 single drives (120GB Western Digitals with 8MB Cache...same series as the one you want), and set them up in raid striping. Basically you will read/write data to both drives simultaneously instead of just one. Will it double the performance of harddrive? Nope IDE raid isn't that good, but I think you'll notice anywhere from upwards of a 30-40% increase wouldn't be too far fetched. Another bonus? Two 120s cost less than one 250. $260 for two fof them. Right there we saved ANOTHER $128
AND your performance has
INCREASED!. $128 + previous $303 = $431 saved so far. WOW its adding up ain't it? And your machine is already FASTER! Maps will load faster in games, copying large amounts of data over your home network to and from other PCs will increase, among other stuff... neat ain't it!
The keyboard I can't fault nor pick on. But you didn't select a mouse? I suggest Logitech MX500. -very- precise. Highest rating mouse out there. Read up on it at
www.tomshardware.com and other places. It generally goes for $35 US. I paid $50 Canadian for mine at best buy. So right there you lost $35 US. Big whoop... $431 - $35 = $396... we're still ahead of the game money wise and you have faster drives and a SWEET mouse (buy one, really its amazing).
Sony CRT. I'm not sure. I'm still trying to figure out which 19" CRT to buy. Think I'll get the Sony 19" G420S... can anyone help me on this? (since I'm taking the time to help this lad out hehe and type this huge response). Well, gamers know a nice big CRT is the best way to go... 21" you can't fault. $639 seems like a great price for it so lets keep it on your list. Still $396 saved and better performance than what you selected.
Next, I'm going to lop your CDRW, DVD Recordable and DVD ROM altogether. You -do- realize that the DVD Recordable can read DVD's right? So you can scrap that DVD ROM out of the picture. You won't need 16X read of DVDROM... the DVD Recordable drive most likely does 8x if not 16x and besides DVD movies only need like 1 or 2x. Looking at pioneer electronic's site it would appear tht it does 16x I could be wrong its not very well written heh. $35 more saved + $396 = $431 so far. You've freed up a drive bay and increasing airflow, meaning you could overclock a TINY bit more if thats what you plan on doing... that in itself just increased your performance a little heh. As for the CDRW? Sure the DVD Recordable can record CDRW, but if you want the latest bragging title amongst your friends ("my 52x is faster than your 32x") hehe then sure go for the lite on. Naw I'm not attacking you... it is nice to have a faster burner that you can quickly make a cd if your on the go. For me, anything 16x and higher is good 'nuff... i've never needed to burn a full 700 meg CD in less than 5 minutes because I was in a hurry, but I guess a lot of people are. Otherwise you can save $48 and just keep that DVD Recordable... saving yet ANOTHER drive bay, and lowering the power supply required (great ain't it... your games STILL perform better than before and you've saved a chunk of change). I'm going to say your a smart man (or woman? heh), and you don't need to ever burn a CDR in less than 5 minutes flat, so we will cut out that CDRW and save $48. $48 + $431 = $479 savings...geeze its getting huge... you could almost buy a second monitor and have DOUBLE the frags !
Audio. Audio, audio, audio... what can be said about audio? I know myself, I'm not an audiophile and yet I do like decent sound (read:
NOT onboard AC97 cheapie sh!t lol). Audio, on most true gamer's lists, isn't that big of a deal. Most people I know use earphones and at most a $50 sound card to play (these are big time gamers that win tournaments and stuff)... they invest their money in display, graphics cards and cpu mostly. Anyhow, the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 platinum for $163 and Klipsch speakers for $349 are one heck of a lot of money to spend for ($512) "music to your ears". Unless you want to make your own home studio, THX certified speakers aren't really necessary to just game with on your quote "gaming rig". You can pick up a nice $100 set on sale that has surround and a sub (5.1 or whatever even 6.1 maybe). As for the sound card, I read an article that claimed the lesser sound blaster audigy card was the
-EXACT- same as the high end one and it showed how to get the same quality out of it. I forget where the article is. Anyways there are other amazing cards (that won't screw with VIA chipsets if you ever switch to one lol), that you can get for $50. I myself use onboard CMEDIA and its quite impressive for gaming...the clarity is great even for my 320kbit MP3s (yes, legitimate ones not illegal). So lets pretend you play it smart, buy $50 card and $100 speakers spending a total of $150 as oppose to $512. You've just saved another $362... thats a substantial amount to save for audio. I mean, ask yourself, are you the guy with the $2000 stereo in his living room? If so, maybe you -are- an audiophile, but if not, then why put so much audio in your PC? Unless you sit and "relish" in the audio like mozart or something, most gamers aren't listening to the high notes and frequencies of a THX certified speaker set when they are dodging bullets in counter-strike. Hell, the game is only as good as its designed for. Is the games you played REALLY targeted for THX sound systems? $362 + previous $479 is a hefty $841 you've saved so far. And your system is
-BETTER- than before performance wise. Which is, once again as I'll state, the only thing that matters to a gamer.
Vantec cooling at $33.00 isn't needed. Since I've bought you the retail version, it comes with AMPLE (yes people) cooling for free (it comes included in the retail boxed cpu...both heatsink and fan). I've run my Athlon 2 years, 24/7 with stock heatsink fan and never had it overheat once... remember AMD are designed to run and be able to take higher temperatures... running at 55-60 C isn't a bad thing.... REALLY! $33 + $841 = $874 you've saved. Your starting to like my ideas I hope. I mean... you've increased performance, saved money and in 3 years when your computer has depreciated to nothing in value, you won't be nearly as mad because you have $874 extra in your bank account that you could have, but didn't spend!
As you will have noticed, I was able to single handedly save you $874 and increase your "gaming rig" performance. I'm going to venture that you don't know much about hardware, so I won't blame you... but these Lian-Li and other stuff don't really make it run faster truth be told... the aluminum casing doesn't have a secret "overclocking gnomes" inside of it that come out while your playing games and speed up your computer LoL. Whats inside is what matters... that holds true for computer as well as people. Monitors however, are one thing where appearance does matter Please heed my suggestions and save yourself some money. $874 plus tax is a nice chunk of change. I couldn't justify spending $3600 US for a gaming rig, but the $2700 or whatever it would cost with my suggestions would be more reasonable... yet it still is costly. One reason is the monitor... this will last you through many upgrades though. Or at least should. With the saved $874, you can even go with Intel p4 3.06 GHz and rambus ram if you want better peformance. Even then you'd have money left over. Don't spend $3600 on a PC... its just not worth it to play games for that much. Unless your the Sultan of Brunei or something and can afford to literally toss that money away.
Have a good day, and thanks for reading my lengthy post. Hope it saves some of you people money. And remember, what is the "flashiest" PC might not always be the best. I have a friend who spent $400 on overclocking junk (sound proofing, fans, water cooling, copper this and that, etc) only to put an
800 MHz DURON in his goddamn computer!
Should I spend $3600 for a gaming rig?
Lian-Li PC-6089 $166.00
Asus Motherboard for AMD Athlon/XP/Duron Processors, Model# A7N8X Deluxe Retail $142.99
ATI All-In-Wonder RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB DDR 8X AGP $385.00
Antec 550W Power Supply For TRUE550 $118.99
AMD ATHLON XP 2500 "Barton" 333 FSB PROCESSOR CPU- OEM $163.00
CORSAIR MEMORY XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, Low Latency (Twin Pack) 1GB(2 x 512MB) 2x(64MX64) PC-3200LLPT With Platinum - Silver Heat Spreaders. $325.00
SONY 1.44MB 3.5 INCH INTERNAL FDD DRIVE $7.50
WD WESTERN DIGITAL "SPECIAL EDITION" 250GB 7200RPM 8MB EIDE HARDdrive $388.00
Logitech BLACK Elite Keyboard $36.00
SONY 21" CRT MONITOR Model CPD-G520 $639.00
Lite On 52x24x52 CDRW $48.00
PIONEER INTERNAL ATAPI DVD-RECORDABLE MODEL DVR-A05SPK3 (DVRA05)- $301.00
LITE-ON XJ-HD166S 16X DVD ROM $35.00
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 platnium $163
VANTEC AeroFlow VA4-C7040. For AMD socket A 462 and Intel 370/FC-PGA/FC-PGA2. $33.00
Klipsch 5.1 speakers $349.00
subTotal for this is $3300